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Title: New Asylum and Withholding Bars for Recruitment or Use of Child Soldiers

Abstract: The Child Soldier Accountability Act of 2008 (CSAA) establishes a criminal offense for the recruitment or use of child soldiers, and also establishes grounds of inadmissibility and removability for aliens who have engaged in such recruitment or use. The Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), therefore, are amending their companion immigration regulations to specify that aliens who are inadmissible or deportable for recruitment or use of child soldiers are considered ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal due to the serious nonpolitical crime bar.

Overall Description of Deadline:
The Child Soldier Accountability Act (CSAA) requires the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary), within 60 days of the CSAA's enactment, to promulgate a final rule establishing that an alien subject to these grounds of inadmissibility or deportability shall be considered an alien with respect to whom there are serious reasons to believe that the alien committed a serious nonpolitical crime.